


The Memories That Shape Us

by Stelmarya



Series: The Spider Club [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Natasha Romanov Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Peter Parker is a Little Shit, Protective Natasha Romanov, Russian Natasha Romanov, Slice of Life, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Weird Plot Shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:35:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23420305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stelmarya/pseuds/Stelmarya
Summary: Peter knew something had changed in Natasha the moment he saw her coming in through the door of the New Avengers Facility, with her hair pulled in a tight bun and a sport bag over her shoulder.orNatasha comes back changed after a trip to Russia, and Peter has to figure out how to fix it.
Relationships: Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Natasha Romanov, Peter Parker & Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark
Series: The Spider Club [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684681
Comments: 7
Kudos: 75





	1. Part I

**Part I**

1

Peter knew something had changed in Natasha the moment he saw her coming in through the door of the New Avengers Facility, with her hair pulled in a tight bun and a sport bag over her shoulder.

“Pete,” she said, smiling fondly at him. “You didn’t have to wait for me. It’s three in the morning, go to sleep.”

“I just wanted to make sure you arrived home safe,” he replied, averting his gaze without intending to. What had changed, what was the difference? She wasn’t hurt, she didn’t have any new scar. Then, what had happened?

“FRIDAY could have easily told you.”

“Still.”

He saw her smile and approach him on the corner of his eye; the hair on his nape stood on end when Nat grabbed his cheek and pulled him to kiss his forehead, although the gesture had always made him feel warm inside. Her hand was cold, almost freezing, and she dropped it almost instantly. He only dared to face her when she left for the lift, turning her back on him.

“Goodnight, Nat,” his voice sounded small, almost childish, and he hoped she wouldn’t say anything.

“Goodnight, Petya. Go to sleep.”

And her figure disappeared in the lift without another word. FRIDAY, who was always alert even at three o’clock in the morning, dimmed the lights so Peter could go all sleepy to his room, but he felt even more restless than usual. He repeated in his mind the whole meeting, every gesture and movements he’d managed to see from her, but there wasn’t anything weird, anything different. Exhaustion at most, and that was logical considering she had just landed from a thirteen hours flight from Moscow.

 _I should tell Mr Stark_ , he thought, but he immediately casted aside that thought. It probably wasn’t anything, just jetlag. Surely tomorrow she’d be better, and whatever that had happened to one of his best friends would be in the past. And with that certainty Peter went to sleep.

2

But she was the same the next day.

He had stayed for the night in the Facility that weekend, so Happy didn’t have to drive all the time to his house in Queens, and Vision was preparing in the kitchen some pancakes of dubious origin. No one had the heart to tell him anything about his culinary skills, especially after Wanda and Mr Rhodes, and least of all Peter. That ciborg could give him a burger made of mice and chocolate and he’d eat it with gusto and ask for more, please and thank you.

Natasha showed up at ten with her hair ruffled and her face pale, makeup free, which only emphasized whatever that was wrong with her. He had the sweatshirt and the plush under his arm, waiting excitedly for her to sit down on the couch so he could show her, but he hesitated when he saw her eyes.

“Good morning,” she said, smiling slightly. He mumbled a greeting and lowered his gaze. “What do you have there?”

“Look what I found,” he drew enthusiasm from his endless reserves and showed her his new Black Widow sweatshirt, with her face printed right in the middle and the homonymous spider in the back, and also a plush of her, with uniform and batons and all. “Check out this great deal I made.”

Natasha gasped, which almost made him feel as if everything was alright, as if nothing had changed, and she ripped the stuff out of his hands.

“Look how gorgeous I am here. Whoa, this is amazing. Look at the plush's curves, it’s so realistic!” He couldn’t look at her in the eye, but he laughed out loud anyways, sitting next to her on the couch, bending down. At least her level of silliness hadn’t changed. “Alright, it’s official: this sweatshirt is now mine.”

“Nat! I bought it first.”

“Pity,” she replied without mercy, already putting the cloth in front of her to see if it fit.

“Besides, I was gonna wear it for the scientific fair, you can’t take it away now!”

“Peter, imagine the irony, the fourth wall inside a fourth wall! I could wear it to go to the UN meetings and proclaim the superiority of my metahumor. The Black Widow with a Black Widow sweatshirt with a black widow on the back. Imagine it!”

“What the hell are you talking ‘bout?” said Tony, coming into the room with a dishcloth over his shoulder. She turned immediately to show him the sweatshirt and he, as always, bursted into laughter.

“Natasha wants to steal my sweatshirt, Mr Stark,” complained Peter to his idol, hoping that he could at least intercede for him, but the scientist didn’t pay him any attention.

“Welcome to the club,” replied Tony, going to the kitchen to check if Vision’s food was edible this time.

“I haven’t even worn it yet!”

“That was your first mistake,” Natasha was smirking evilly, spreading the sweatshirt in front of her, and she had never seemed so young to him as now, as if she wasn’t older than twenty-five or twenty-six. Just for that he leaned back on the couch and let her be, giving up on the sweatshirt.

 _If Tony distracts her, surely I can at least get back the plush_. Tony and Vision came back with food, apparently edible for humans, and Peter started eating without minding the flavor. His aunt’s initial attempts at cooking after adopting him were the same; the best option was to swallow and smile.

“I trust your trip was satisfactory, Agent Romanoff,” Vision told her after a short silence, only broken by the tinkling of the cutlery and some snorts. She raised one corner of her mouth and nodded.

“It has been awhile since I spent a winter in Russia. I think I was out of habit, I’ve been Americanized.”

Tony snorted at that, and Peter tried to imagine what a climate like that would be like, in the far north. He shivered just by imagining it; New York’s weather was enough for him, thank you very much.

“Did you bring us any gifts?” he asked her, plastering his best cute cat face. A few months ago he wouldn’t have dared to talk to the Black Widow like that, but now he knew the woman’s true character.

Or so he thought.

“I don’t know, you tell me,” her eyes shone as she chewed on a piece of egg with too much salt and too little oil.

“I have one of those dolls that get inside in other dolls and then in other dolls, I love ‘em. I bought them in Moscow,” intervened Tony, who had joined her vacations a few weeks after she'd arrived. As far as he knew, she had spent almost her whole trip on her own in Russia, not just in the capital city.

“And those little hats, the square, warm ones? Did you bring one of those?”

“ _Ushankas_ ,” said Vision, fixing his blue cotton vest. Peter was too amused by the odd group they made: a scientist covered in grease and wearing a stained shirt, a teenager with his dumb _Star Trek_ t-shirt, a spy with a sweater too big for her which she’d probably stolen from Captain America, and Vision who, well, who looked like an accountant, or an insurance salesman. That picture was so funny to him he couldn’t avoid snorting.

“If you keep laughing at my national treasures I won’t give you your gifts.”

“Oh, so there _are_ souvenirs!”

Natasha bent forwards to leave her plate on the table and pulled a bag from behind the sofa, which he had no idea when she had left it there. Inside were all kinds of things, like the hat and the dolls (“ _Matryoshka_ ,” Vision supplied) and magnets for the fridge and a plush of a shirtless Putin and sweatshirts and some really weird shoes and a tiny Kremlin and more. Peter stopped focusing on the gifts to see her face, the smile that lit her face as she showed him every trinket she and Tony bought, the wrinkles her happiness created, the wild locks of hair that fell every so often on her face. There was again that feeling of error, as if there was a small piece that didn’t fit in the picture, something his naked eye couldn’t detect.

 _It doesn’t matter,_ he thought, because she was as cheerful as ever and she told them her jokes, as lame as his, and she put the _ushanka_ on Vision’s head between laughter. Peter turned to Tony, looking to share a knowing glance at such a happy display, but the man was also examining Natasha without smiling, without taking his eyes off her, like a lion. His own smile dimmed, and he dumbly stood up when she called him to put the hat on him.

“ _Ideal’nyy, Petya!_ ” she exclaimed, adjusting the hat on his tousled hair. And then he knew. The mistake was exactly in the place where he hadn’t looked, and now that she was so close to him, he found ridiculous the fact that he hadn’t noticed before.

Her eyes were dead.

3

“Hang on tight, eh!”

“Who do you think I am?”

“I think not even you could avoid smashing at this height, Nat.”

“I was already coming back when you were born, kid. Climb.”

If someone had told him a year before that he’d be climbing a wall dressed up all black with the Black Widow on his back, he’d have sent them directly to the shrink. But now, after fighting against Captain America, the Winter Soldier and Falcon _at the same time,_ nothing surprised him anymore. His life had become a romantic sitcom… but without the romance.

“We’re fine here. I don’t want to risk those one hundred and six feet.”

They sat on a short, rugged area with a leveled ground that could barely hold their asses, and he let his sticky hands go off the wall to hold the edge of the ground. They were too high; cars were like toys on the streets at their feet, and the pedestrians were tiny ants that walked irregularly. The cold wind penetrated his clothes, despite him being well dressed for the weather, and he couldn’t contain his shiver.

“I think you were right,” she said, shaking her head to remove the hair on her face. “I think we went too high.”

“Nah. The view is beautiful here. You’re not cold because you’re Russian, that’s all.”

Natasha smiled a bit and hummed, but she didn’t say anything else, and it occurred to him that he might have made a mistake by doing this, although he didn’t know exactly why. Since the night she had come back, that imbalance in reality had changed his perspective on their meetings, her jokes and memes, despite the fact that almost all the time everything seemed the same, despite the fact that Natasha hadn’t shown any signs of a change in her behavior. She was a master spy, after all; she probably knew the exact moment Peter worried by the number of times he blinked or something like that.

Maybe she was doing the same thing as he: taking the trouble to ignore his changes to preserve what they had once, their unusual but strong friendship. Or maybe she had been waiting for a moment like that, when the two of them were alone without any possibility of an external intervention, to interrogate him.

“We gotta find a third member,” he told her, just to get rid of that idea.

“Where are we gonna find another superhero with a spider aesthetic?”

“What if we consider other insects?”

“Then it wouldn’t be our _Spider Club_ anymore.” A moment of silence. Peter leaned backwards and let his smile swallow his face; that was the thing that mostly made him feel as if everything was alright, as if everything _would_ be alright. A person who joked so much couldn’t be so bad… right? “Well, I’ll be lenient and allow a villain with a spider aesthetic to join us, but only if they bring cookies.”

“And where the hell are we gonna find a villain like that? Besides, I imagine them like one of those aliens that came to New York with gigantic legs and a thousand eyes,” he exaggerated a shiver, although the image was truly disgusting.

“You’re such a hypocrite. You pull spiderwebs out of your wrists! You only need to put eggs on another man now and the whole set will be complete.”

“Gross, Nat!”

Their laughter was muffled by the city’s traffic, and when he turned to watch her, the building’ and car’s lights played strange, geometric shapes on her face, lightening up her fair hair until it seemed impossibly scarlet. He could almost pretend her eyes were alive.

Almost.

“I’m gonna post it on the internet,” he declared, imagining the whole thing with giggles. “Black Widow and Spiderman are looking for a superhero with a spider theme so they can join our _Spider Club_ every Tuesday, Thursday and holidays. Supervillains count, but only if they have cookies.”

“Sounds perfect,” she replied, pensive.

“But what kind of hero would voluntarily use an insect theme? I mean, look at Iron Man, or War Machine, or even Vision, aren’t they cool? I didn’t even want to get bitten by a spider, it was an accident!"

He raised and waved his arms to emphasize his protests, although the way his voice broke was embarrassing. Fucking puberty, he couldn’t wait to see his vocal chords actually working so he could talk like a man, like Tony. Then his voice wouldn’t crack every time he got excited or angry like a thirteen year old boy.

He turned to her to see if she’d say something about his puberty and glare if she did, but the words died in his throat. Natasha was looking at him with a blank face, the left half darkened and the right half lightened too brightly. His heart speeded in his chest, although he didn’t know what was going on; he had never been afraid of Nat. She would never hurt him, he was sure of that.

“You’re right. Who would voluntarily choose a spider theme?” she said, voice monotonous. Peter wanted to look away, at least look at his hands and clear his throat, but he couldn’t. Or he didn’t _want_ to, actually. Maybe he could understand what was happening to her if he looked at her face once and for all, if he stopped pretending that Russia hadn’t become a disturbing puzzle.

“Nat—”

“The Black Widow,” she muttered, apparently watching something well beyond his face. She finally broke eye contact, turning to watch the city again, loosening her jaw. He watched her profile, her conventionally attractive face, and he wondered what kind of things were running in her mind at that moment.

“Nat.”

“I guess they wanted that double meaning, eh? A cannibal spider, venomous, terrifying, that sometimes eats men, sometimes it doesn’t.” Now he was scared alright. He wished she said those things with rage, or with a tense voice, or even with humor, but no. There was no inflexion in her voice, her eyes were wide opened and locked on some building in front of them. He contained the urge to get away from her. “It makes sense to call little girls like the things nightmares are made of. Or, at least, us. They put some thought into it.”

Peter swallowed harshly and shivered again, although the temperature hadn’t dropped. He didn’t know anything about Natasha’s past, he didn’t even know where she had gained her superhero nickname, but he hadn’t dared to ask. It didn’t take a genius to know it wasn’t a nice past, and the last thing he wanted was to disturb her.

 _I guess they wanted that double meaning. They put some thought into it…_ Who was she talking about?

“About the Red Room,” she said, scaring the ever-loving shit out of him. Now she could read his thoughts too?

“Red Room,” he repeated, savouring the word. He hadn’t never heard of such a thing, or at least not in America.

“ _Krasnaya Komnata*_. It was a long time ago, don’t worry ‘bout it.”

“Oh,” he managed to croak, voice small and soft.

It took a while before any of them talked again; the traffic had already decreased at their feet and lights slowly went out as everyone went back to their houses to sleep. Now that everything seemed less shiny he found himself tired, as if he had been training hard for some hours. It was a very strange feeling, considering he hadn’t done absolutely nothing beyond talking for the last half an hour.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” said Nat finally, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’m remembering some stuff, that’s all.”

“You can talk to me about it, if you want,” said Peter, although he felt like a small kid next to her. She had never seemed so big, so older, and he couldn’t explain why he had thought they were the same. That woman had something wrong in her, something cold and mean, and he wished to find a way to help her, even a little.

She only nodded and smiled at him, carefully stretching her arms and torso to avoid smacking him in the face.

“My ass is numb, kid. C’mon, help me down.”

“Oh?” Peter decided to go for it and bent his body forward, twisting in the air to support himself on all fours against the building’s glass windows. “I’m just Spider Boy, you’re the great Black Widow. I know you can go back without me.”

“Insolent brat,” she replied, smirking mischievously. He knew he’d have to pay for that sooner or later, but her face had regained some color, and life. Just for that, everything was worth it. “I’m gonna make you wish your aunt May finds you watching porn.”

Peter laughed out loud and let himself go.

4

“This is the cutest thing I’ve seen in my life,” said Tony when he saw them arriving.

Natasha, wearing her Black Widow sweatshirt and some tights, had entered the sixty-six floor of the Tower with Peter on her heels, who was trying to fix one of his unruly locks of hair. Behind him was MJ, discretely taming her fiery hair, and behind her came Ned, watching the whole place with widened eyes.

“Mother duck and her three ducklings,” laughed Tony, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and leaving his screwdriver on the table.

“Good morning, Mr Stark!” Peter exclaimed, followed by his friends’ shy greetings. The only reason why they weren’t speechless was because they had already met both superheros. 

“Parker, Jones, Leeds,” said Tony with disinterest, as if he hadn't laughed at them just a second before. Peter had realized that Tony, despite everything that had happened since he declared himself Iron Man, still liked to pretend he was the same billionaire playboy eccentric philanthropist, so he had already gotten used to his flippancy.

Peter and Ned approached him to see what Tony was fixing now, while MJ stayed a little behind, and Natasha left the papers that Pepper and Ross had given her on the table. It was a bit weird to see MJ so subdued, without making her snarky, truthful comments, but he had long realized what was happening.

MJ was stuck to Nat like a moth to a lightbulb. She talked only about her at school, and now that she was meeting her for the second time she seemed determined to make a good impression.

“ _The woman that told the United States Congress to fuck off?_ ” MJ had told him during a Physics break, smiling at him knowingly, because he also deeply admired Nat. “ _I love her._ ”

And now it seemed that MJ wasn’t going to say a thing until she found a ‘smart, clever and funny’ phrase, according to her own words, to impress her favorite superhero. The thing that she didn’t know was that Natasha Romanova wasn’t the cold, serene woman they shown in TV; she was Nat, the one that secretly stole the sweaters of every superhero she met and then swore they were hers in the first place, the one what used internet memes perfectly, the one that just two days before had tried to go down the twenty steps of the Facility wearing skates. According to Mr Rhodey, when put together she, Tony and Peter had only two brain cells, and Nat had the monopoly of them most of the time.

That made him smile.

“... and if you don’t bother me, I’ll even let you try it after the security tests,” Tony was saying, showing them a prototype of an artificial limb that he was developing for the Health area of Stark Industries. Peter was closer to biology than to pure mechanical engineering, but that was amazing; he loved the things Tony could do with just a few tools and ingenuity.

Some day, if he worked really hard, he might be like him.

“But before that, read this,” Natasha interrupted him, addressing the engineer for the first time since they arrived. He looked up and smirked.

“You’re late.”

“Sorry, I didn’t want to come.”

“Mrs Potts gave us a small tour, because she was available on the ground floor,” said Peter, trying not to die of laughter like Ned and MJ at Tony’ and Natasha’s exaggerated faces. “Look, she even gave us a sticker.”

He showed him with pride his sticker that said ‘Stark Tower’ with his sleek, modern design stuck to his shirt, as if the man didn’t own the whole thing.

“So cute.”

Tony stood up with a groan and approached Nat and her files, stretching after a long time bent over a table. Several bones and joints popped like small explosions, and Nat snickered.

“You’re such an old man, Stark.”

“And you’re all brats.”

Both stood shoulder to shoulder reading the documents as Ned and he read (n _o touching_ ) the prosthesis’ base equations, the complexity of the combination between math, biology, anatomy, engineering and chemistry, all to connect the neuronal system to a machine that perfectly answered every command. Tony had created Vision, a piece of work that seemed more human than half the people Peter had met, he'd even given Mr Rhodey back his mobility! He didn’t doubt he’d be capable of creating the best tools to improve people’s life. It was one of the things he admired the most about him.

“It reminds me of the Winter Soldier’s arm,” said Ned quietly, turning his head to see the hologram from another angle. He recalled his encounter with that terrifying man.

“Oh, that was much, _much_ stronger. And bigger.”

“Did you _feel_ the Winter Soldier’s arm? How was it?” whispered Mj on his left with malice, raising one suggestive eyebrow. He blushed against his will and Ned snickered.

“Peter has _felt_ many superheroes,” he said, imitating the girl’s raised brows. “Captain America, Falcon…”

“... Black Widow, Hawkeye…”

Peter growled and massaged his temples, looking away from his two stupid friends. He hadn’t _felt_ no one, he had fought them! He was almost an adult and fought like it, like the Avengers. Just because they used martial arts it didn’t mean he fondled everyone!

“My dream is for Mrs Romanoff to choke me with her tights,” declared Mj as any other would declare their dream was to win the lottery, and he snorted. After sparring with her in the gym he knew too well how that felt, and it wasn’t a very nice experience.

“Honestly, me too,” said Ned, sighing exaggeratedly, and Peter raised his eyes for help.

Tony and Natasha were still talking quietly, shoulder touching as they pointed several pages of the documents she'd brought him; the only thing he knew was that they had to do with the Sokovia Accords, a file that Natasha worked on day and night to analyze and improve, although he didn’t quite knew what that meant. The thing that actually caught his attention was the expression on Nat’s face as the engineer rambled next to her, an expression he didn’t know how to decipher but that made his stomach clench. He had already gotten used to watching her discreetly, trying to find some light in her eyes or a change in her soft, twisted lips, and only Tony had managed it. Maybe it was because they'd known each other for a long time, or maybe it was because his hero had something he didn’t.

 _He’s good for her,_ he thought as his eyes softened and his fists loosened. That made him happy; he could trust Tony to support Nat too, to be a good friend and help her where he couldn’t. He was just a fifteen-year-old kid, after all.

With that in mind he went back to his friend’s conversation and let it go, at least for a while.

5

“Are you sure it’s fine?”

Natasha didn’t answer, increasing his anxiety levels tenfold. He hurried to follow her, hopping on the grass and taking care not to step on some of the many toys scattered around.

“Nat? I really don’t want to intrude…”

“Shut up and walk.”

The isolated farm’s bell sounded too loud in his head, and loud steps echoed inside before the door opened.

“Auntie Nat!” a girl shrieked when she saw her, jumping to hug her.

“How’s my princess?” Nat entered the house, stumbling with the girl’s weight in her arms, and Peter didn’t have any other option but to follow her inside, mumbling a shy ‘excuse me’. It seemed like any other rural farm, full of toys and books, with worn furniture and a smell of wood and fresh grass that made him think of better times. Another kid showed up in the hallway, small and unsteady, and a woman followed him.

“Finally, woman,” the stranger said, hugging Natasha and squeezing the girl between them. The toddler also grabbed his friend’s leg, and he stood in the doorway like a lightpost, without knowing where to look or move. He _knew_ he shouldn’t have come. Before he could sneak out and pretend he was a invisible, that woman saw him. “Hi! You must be Peter.”

And she approached him just like that to hug him, with the toddler following her like a duckling. He hugged her back clumsily and tried to erase the blush that colored his neck, clearing his throat so his voice didn’t break.

“Yeah, I’m Peter Parker. My pleasure.”

“She’s Laura Barton,” said Nat, patting the girl’s head. “This is Lila and that rascal is Nate.”

“My pleasure, Lila,” he said, surprised at the wide smile the girl gave him.

“Hi, Pete! Can I call you Pete?”

“Sure.”

Nate watched him from below for a few seconds before he decided there was nothing special in that stranger who didn’t even bring him some toys, unlike Natasha, so he left wobbling and grabbed her legs.

“Come in, come in, make yourself at home. Do you want water, juice, soda?”

“Orange juice is fine.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Peter sat on the couch, trying not to show how uncomfortable he really felt, cleaning his sweaty hand on his jeans. Lila smiled at him from her mom’s legs and gave him the glass full of juice, following her mom’s orders.

“Thank you, Lila,” he said, taking a sip and making a dramatic moan of delight. “It’s so good, I _love_ it.”

And to his absolute horror, the girl’s smile crumbled, although she hid it well.

“Thanks,” she said quietly, squeezing her hands full of wristbands. “It was my dad’s favorite.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t know what else to say, so he just watched a painting of a river that was hanging in front of him, pleading for Natasha to save him from this situation. That woman hadn’t even told him where they were going, just shoved him inside that house without preamble, and now she also left him alone in there. How could one live like that?

“Can you do us a favor, Petya?” Natasha called him from the kitchen. He stood up like a spring, mumbling some apologizes to Lila, and gingerly entered the place where the two women were.

“Yes?”

“Can you bring this to my son Cooper? He’s upstairs, in his room,” Mrs Barton asked him, giving a plate full of grilled cheese sandwiches. Both were leaning on the countertop, and he glanced at Natasha as he approached them.

 _You’re cruel, woman._ Natasha only smirked, knowing damn well what she was doing to him.

“Thank you so much, Peter.”

He climbed the stairs carefully; upstairs the smell of wood was even stronger, although there was also kid’s cologne and powder. Each door had a nameplate, and he knocked twice the one that said _Coop_.

“Excuse me,” he said, slowly opening the door. A room not so different from his was lit by sunlight, and a boy was sitting on the bed, bent over a Rubik's cube. “Hi, I’m Peter. Your mom asked me to give you this.”

“Ah, thanks!” replied Cooper, raising his head and reaching to grab the plate. It was then that he noticed the kid was crying.

_Oh God._

_Say something!_ A part of his mind protested as Cooper gave him one of the sandwiches and made him sit next to him on the bed.

_What do I say? Let’s see, let’s see…_

“Um, I like your room.”

He would’ve gladly smashed his head against the wall had he been able to. Of _all_ the possible things to say… 

“Thanks.” Cooper wasn’t hiding his thick tears; he faced him squarely as if it was completely normal, and he sniffed before he talked again. “Are you here with Auntie Nat?”

“Eh, yeah.”

“Are you her friend?”

“Yeah… I hope so.”

Cooper smiled again and chewed the last crumbles of his food as he twisted the cube. Right there was a perfect opportunity that Peter didn’t waste.

“Do you want me to solve it? I've done it lots of times.”

“Can you do it?”

“It’s super easy once you understand the dimensions,” he explained, twisting the object to get the idea of where each piece was. “Look.”

And he got exclamations of wonder when he solved it a few moments later, despite the fact he'd explained each step. A bubble of happiness rose in his stomach when he noticed the other kid wasn’t crying anymore, too interested in his game and his praises.

“Can you do other puzzles?”

“What else you got?”

He was really embarrassed to notice, some two hours later, that he hadn’t bothered to go back to talk to Mrs Barton and Natasha; he'd stayed with Cooper, solving small skill games with him, and Lila arrived a while later, looking for some fun with her brother and the new boy. They were younger than him, thirteen and ten and most, but the age difference didn’t bother him. To the contrary, apparently everything he did was amazing or cool, as if he was their big brother.

“Go find some juice,” Lila ordered him, stretching on her brother’s bed to hold his three-dimensions puzzles. Any kind of shyness she might’ve felt had already vanished; she treated Peter as if she had known him her whole life. “Coop, go get the Nintendo DS, let’s play _Mario Kart._ ”

“Oooh, this friendship is over before it even began,” said Peter, leaving behind the laughing children to go down the stairs with the empty glasses in his arms. He was so content and relaxed he almost barged in the kitchen just like that, as if he was in his own house. It was the sob that made him stop.

_Oh, no. Not again._

It didn’t seem to be Nat the one crying inside, but Mrs Barton. Their voices were low and deep, but his hearing was sharp enough to understand the words, despite the fact he didn’t mean to eavesdrop.

“—for the money,” was saying Mrs Barton, with her softer, more accented voice. Her words were ragged, but she wasn’t crying very hard. “It’s for… everything, y'know? He promised.”

“He has always been an idiot,” Natasha intervened. He couldn’t decipher her tone: it was neither calm nor angry, and not even reassuring. He couldn’t help but wonder who they were talking about.

“And Nate. Oh God, Nate… I don’t know what I’m gonna do with three brats and no help,” said Mrs Barton, and that was the last straw. He couldn’t stay there, eavesdropping just like that about such a delicate matter that clearly wasn’t his business! He knocked the door three times before he opened it to let them know beforehand.

“Excuse me.” He couldn’t face the other woman; he just focused on Natasha’s full lips, her straight eyebrows and clear eyes. “The children ask for more juice.”

“Of course, give it here,” Mrs Barton took the glasses from his arms with her head lowered to pour drinks and prepare more snacks. In that whole time Natasha didn’t say anything, and he didn’t dare to do anything more than shuffle his feet and scratch his nails; she seemed angry, _truly_ angry, and the last thing Peter wanted was to put himself in her warpath.

 _I’m sorry,_ he thought without realizing it, brushing Natasha’s hand with his own in a vain attempt at comfort. Now that he thought more about it, it wasn’t ire in her face, but pain. He wanted to tell her he was sorry, that he wished there was something he could do to help, anything, but no words left his mouth. She glanced up at him, focusing on some point on his cheek, but her eyes didn’t soften. He even considered just saying it, but that situation was well beyond his abilities.

That expression stayed in her face for a long time after their visit to Barton's farm, and Peter considered the possibility of being wrong. Maybe he never really knew her, and that ruthless harshness was what really laid behind Natasha Romanova’s face. Maybe he would never know it at all. 


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, there is an Insect Man in Marvel. No, I don't know why.

** Part II **

6

 _Be cool, be cool, don’t be an idiot._ He straightened his bow for the ninth time and breathed deeply, trying to calm his racing heart.

“You’re gonna hyperventilate,” MJ told him at his side, pushing aside his hands to fix his suit herself. “Chill.”

“I’m chill,” he screeched, and he didn’t even have enough strength left to blush. His whole being was collapsing, his mind simply didn’t work anymore. The crowd’s murmur behind him didn’t help at all; he could almost feel all their eyes on him, analyzing him, _judging_ him. “I’m great.”

“Do you want me to get you a bag, Parker?” she asked, watching him carefully. He shook his head, thankful that she didn’t make fun of him at that moment. He wasn’t ready for any type of joke, much less directed to him.

 _It’s all cool, nothing to worry about. It’s just a ceremony._ Damnit, why did so many people have to come? It was a stupid award ceremony for high school kids! Did that bunch of people have nothing better to do?

“Come ‘ere, sit down, it’s about to start.”

MJ grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him to the rows of chairs where the nominees were supposed to sit. He was so nervous, cold sweat trailed down his temples and back, turning his dress shirt into some kind of wet, uncomfortable cloth. Everybody around him moved and fixed themselves in their seats, while _he_ had no idea what was going on. Every practice and mock ceremonies had been for nothing; he didn’t even remember his own name.

“You’re Junior Scientist Award,” MJ whispered in his ear, leaning her mouth against his skin so he could hear her above the director’s voice. “When I squeeze your shoulder, stand up and go.”

 _Oh my God._ He was going to die from pure shame. How could he stand up in front of his entire school and receive an award? Did he have to say a speech too? Good Lord, what if Flash was in the crowd? Jesus

“Almost there.” MJ stood up to receive her award as a Distinguished Student, not just for her scientific participation but also civic and moral, and all the lights blinded him when he tried to look for her on the stage. Every lamp was focused on the awarded person, _all of them_! He wouldn’t be able to see anybody, but everybody would see him.

“I think I’m going to puke,” he whispered, wiping the sweat from his upper lip. He was going to look so stupid up there, with his moussed hair and his crooked bow, receiving a nerd’s award. Oh God, why did they have to do this to him?

“Go, now!” Mj pushed him from his seat so hard he tripped, stumbling his way to the stage. There was applause, but also jeers and laughter, and he went blind when the director gave him the small diploma for his excellent GPA and performance in the scientific area.

He’d have preferred for earth to swallow him.

“Thanks,” he managed to say as the crowd cheered and the director shook his hand. He went back to his seat dumbfounded and confused, eyes full of dots and bright lights, and MJ clapped his shoulder when he sat down.

 _Done? That was all?_ The worst was already over. No one had died, he hadn’t vomited on himself or fallen flat on his face. He cleaned his hands on his pants to avoid staining his diploma, the one that proclaimed the award to Peter Benjamin Parker of Midtown School of Science and Technology. He wondered what would have Uncle Ben said if he had seen him there, standing like a tree, lanky, proud of his own hard work but also embarrassed for some stupid reason. He guessed he’d never know.

“There’s my baby, the pride of the family!” shrieked Aunt May when the ceremony ended, bending to hug him with all her might. “I love you so much! You’re the best, the smartest, the—”

“Auntie!” he exclaimed, covering his reddened cheeks. He didn’t want his classmates to hear those things, even if they made him feel all mushy on the inside, like melted marshmallow. “It’s just a diploma.”

“Just a diploma! Can you believe it, Nat?”

His aunt let him go just so the other woman could squeeze the life out of him too, and for the first time since he met her he noticed Natasha’s curves, pressed against his body. That only worsened his blush; why did he have to feel the slightest touch now, with the person he least wanted to think about like that? Fucking spider senses.

“Congratulations, Petrusha,” she said with fondness, combing the wild locks that had stuck to his forehead with his sweat. “Go with your aunt, we gotta take some pictures here.”

Both of them womanhandled him to take all kinds of pictures, with and without diploma, and not knowing how or when, Peter found himself outside his school gym, with his jacket under his arm and Natasha’s hand on his shoulder. His aunt May was answering a work call away from the noise, and her short, skinny dress had already attracted the glances of every classmate of his, both women _and_ men. _Ugh_.

“I hate high school,” he said, averting his gaze to the ground. Nat removed her hand and shifted her feet, remaining silent. “It’s the worst. The semester barely started and I’m already done.”

As if every god out there wanted to prove his point, Flash’s voice echoed along the giggles of his friends behind him: “Congratulations, Penis Parker!” They laughed even louder, and Peter wondered if it was possible to blush redder than this. “I _love_ your aunt, can you gimme her number?”

“She’s such a piece of ass!”

“Have you got another one of those hidden in there?”

He didn’t raise his head until their voices vanished on the other side of the street, and he glared at them when they were far, far away. He'd _known_ they were going to be there just to annoy him, but harassing his aunt? Hell no. That was going too far.

“ _Easy there, Pete,_ ” said a voice on his left side, so clearly he got spooked.

“Eh?”

“I said easy there, Pete,” repeated Natasha on his right, resting a hand on his arm. She raised her head to lock their eyes, although the last thing he wanted was people noticing his crimson cheeks and ears. “It’s not worth it.”

“Yes, Nat,” he said monotonously, although what almost left his lips was ‘Yes, Uncle Ben’. It'd been awhile since he'd last thought about him, especially after all the crazy shit he'd lived as Spiderman, but with all the families around him his uncle’s face had popped up in his mind, wrinkled and serious, with his half-lidded eyes and deep voice as he explained to him how the washing machine worked. His uncle had always loved machines.

Every family around him reminded him the things he didn’t have, nor parents or siblings or grandparents or cousins; he hadn’t even expected Natasha to come, he was sure she had better things to do that Friday night. That reminded him how grateful he was for her presence, hers and May’s. They were just two, but for him it was more than enough.

“Thank you _so much_ for coming, Nat. It means a lot to me,” he said, trying to convey in his face every emotion that swirled in his chest: gratitude, fondness, sadness, love, joy, melancholy. “You didn’t have to bother, though. I could’ve sent you May’s videos.”

“Tony really wanted to come too, but he’s in Riyadh right now. He’s already spamming me with dumb messages, demanding to see the videos,” she replied, ignoring his last statement. She instead showed him her phone as proof, which was vibrating with constant notifications from an ‘Antoshka’. “Don’t tell him I told you, but he’s planning a surprise party next week once he comes back. Vision and Rhodey are coming, and the Bartons too. Cooper and Lila ask ‘bout you all the time.”

A smile blossomed in his face without facing opposition. That was the best thing anyone had told him all week, even better than his diploma. Tony Stark, planning a party for _him_ , for dorky Peter Parker, inviting people as cool as War Machine and the Black Widow, people who voluntarily wanted to spend time with him and hang out. Not even in his wildest dreams he’d have pictured something like that.

“But act surprised, yes? Don’t let them find out I opened my mouth.”

And she left after that, despite the fact that May and he invited her to have dinner with them. Apparently she had some sort of ‘urgent business’ with, and he quoted, ‘some morons who couldn’t tell their asses apart from the floor’. He watched her walk away before he got inside the cab with his aunt, her red hair hidden by a hat and one of Tony’s sweatshirts covering her torso and tights. He wondered where she was actually going, what did she do as she sent cat pictures with human expressions and ‘: )’ in their chat, what went through her mind when she said the things she said. He wondered who was truly Natasha, with Queens’ bright lights reflecting against his face; all the time he'd spent with her, all the jokes and puns and camaraderie and fondness, had created a picture he still couldn’t see.

No matter how much he disliked it, no matter how much he pretended otherwise, Natasha was years away from him, even farther than Tony, and the abyss between them that had somehow closened and deepened after her trip was threatening to swallow him whole. He couldn’t see how this was going to end, and for a scientist like him, for someone whose life was centered around results, there wasn’t anything more terrifying than that.

7

“Naaaaaat! Natasha!”

Nothing. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen the Avengers Facility so empty, without Vision reading on the couch, or Mr Rhodey walking around the hallways with his repaired back, or Everett Ross bossing Natasha around with Maria Hill, telling her to read something in a secret, confidential file.

“Hey, Nat! NAAAAAT!”

“What? What happened? Where’s the fire?” Natasha appeared on a side hallway, holding a bowl and a wooden spoon in hand, wearing a Thor apron that depicted his rock abs and metal suit. Russian mixed with English so fast, he barely understood what she said. “Died? _Chto sluchilos_?”

“That’s exactly what I need.”

Natasha remained silent, just blinking to convey her absolute confusion.

“I’ve history homework, _Russian_ history,” Peter wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, showing her the notebook and history book in his arms. Nat shifted her weight on her feet.

“I didn’t know you saw Russian history in detail,” she said, whipping a thick mix in the bowl as both walked slowly to the kitchen. It was a dull, lifeless day, with cold winds that had burnt his cheeks as he moved to the Facility, and it occurred to him that this winterly weather was surely quite similar to Russia’s. Maybe. Probably.

As she went back to the oven to adjust the temperature, Peter considered telling her that it wasn’t really _mandatory_ to do it about Russian history, it was just a general history assignment, and each one of them could choose the period they wanted to explore. And he had chosen Russia. 20th century Russia. Soviet Russia. It was all nice, but he didn’t know what he would answer if she asked him why he chose that. 

_Because I want to know more. Because I want to know more about_ you _. Because you’re an absolute mystery and I can’t be a good friend if I don’t know a single thing about you._

_Because I want you to trust me and—_

“I’m not bothering you, right?” he asked after a long pause, watching her profile as she lubricated a baking tray. He was starting to get a little bit too familiar with the Avengers, he knew that, but he couldn’t help it. They were such cool people, so strong and smart and capable and—

“Your eyes are shining, Pete. I can almost _feel_ your flattery,” she said, turning to smirk at him. He mumbled half hearted excuses, covering his mouth with his hand. “Remember, flattery will get you everywhere. Here, help me shape these cookies and then you can ask me whatever you want.”

Twenty sticky minutes later, he couldn’t believe Natasha really was capable of shaping perfect cookies in small figures without looking all misshapen. His own cookies looked like those aliens that came to New York, or maybe like Ultron.

“Not at all!” she said, pointing at one of his less ugly cookies. “Look, this one almost looks like Loki.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, after Hulk smashed him against the ground a few times.”

He smiled wryly, and they tidied the kitchen together before sitting on the table and arranging the notebook and book. He scribbled with his best handwriting _Soviet Russia_ and _Peter Parker,_ just to realize a second later that Natasha was scrutinizing him with the force of a laser beam, without blinking, without smiling.

“Um, Nat?”

“What do you want to know?”

A bead of sweat trailed down his back, despite the fact that the kitchen’s temperature was perfect. He hadn’t intended for this to be an interrogation, he had wanted it to be a nice talk… between friends… about their past and such.

“Eh, um." His mind was blank, as it always happened when he was really nervous or when he tried to lie. His blank paper was pristine white, immaculate, and words from his history book flew around his head, things like _KGB_ and _perestroika_ and _glasnost_ and _terror regime_. A memory from two years ago appeared in his mind without his consent, when Washington DC had burnt and the Potomac had been full of debris and Natasha had talked in front of the Congress. “How, er, how was living, like, in that time? In the Soviet times, I mean.”

When Black Widow’s crimes had been exposed to the world.

Natasha hummed softly, without taking her eyes off him, and one of her fingers started tracing circles on the granite countertop.

“The Soviet era had already declined when I was born, everything was decadent, it was lost glor—”

“Sorry for interrupting, but, when were you born? Nineteen…”

“November the seventh, nineteen eighty-four, in Volgograd.” Her voice was monotonous, as if she was quoting something by rote to a public, and for some reason he didn’t write that down. “Everything was over in ninety-one. I barely lived a few years in Soviet Russia, but they felt eternal.”

“How…? What was it like?”

“It was communal apartments, small, given by the government, every single one of them the same. We were all cramped, entire families in one room. I remember… I remember sitting with my mother, waiting for another family to finish using the kitchen. I also remember my brothers and me being scolded because we touched the neighbors’ light switch in the hall."

 _Brothers?,_ thought Peter incredulously. She had never mentioned anything about having brothers!* That was some piece of news, did Mr Stark know about it? Finally he’d be able to tell him something he didn’t already know!

“And school? What were schools like? Did you sing the national anthem to Stalin every morning?”

“I never went to school.” A dismal silence fell on the kitchen. That had never occurred to Peter; _everyone_ went to school, at least primary school. However, she pulled him out of his thoughts with a small giggle. “Singing the national anthem to Stalin? You’re hopeless, Pete.”

That dispelled some of the tense atmosphere, but millions of ideas still haunted his mind at light speed. If she hadn’t gone to school, what had she done during her childhood? Why hadn’t she gone? Where was her family? What kind of life had Natasha lived? The more things she told him, the worse he felt for her. It was something completely different of what he might've imagined, an alternative life of his average, American childhood.

“What—what else?”

Natasha turned around the history book and skimmed through the Cold War’s contents half-heartedly, leaning her chin on her hand.

“KGB was no longer KGB when I got in,” she commented, which gave Peter a small heart attack. He had completely forgotten what Natasha had been before joining SHIELD and the Avengers. “So I don’t have much to say ‘bout that. The _komitet_ was split in the FSB and the SVR in the ninety-one, I was assigned to the latter. It was all the same, monotonous, corrupt, rigidly controlled; there were always report of dissidents, but considering that everything was so chaotic after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, you never knew if they sent you to execute someone for treason or just convenience.”

“I remember… I remember how horrible Chernobyl was, it was so strange, they said America had sabotaged us, that radiation was going to kill us all, but the tragedy remained in Ukraine. I remember that Gorbachov always flew to America, there were always promises of dialogue and support, but everything was falling apart. I was in the Bolshoi when the tanks reached Moscow, everything was chaos, Gorbachov fled the city and then came Yeltsin, the drunkard. Everything was the same.”

“I remember that a bribe and some favors could get you anything if you talked to the right person. After being recruited I didn’t have those problems, but the queues to buy bread and soap and milk were _eternal,_ you spent half your life there. That’s why everything was propaganda: they told you everything in the West was better, that an era of transparency and prosperity and endless opportunities and freedom and _democracy_ was just ‘round the corner, but the truth was that everything was poverty, crime, mafias and wars in Chechnya.”

“I remember—”

And then her voice broke. Natasha’s deep tone, combined with her haunting words, had created an illusion of hypnosis; he could almost see in his mind the images associated to her words: queues in a freezing winter that lasted for hours, decadent rooms lit by a yellowish light, criminal gangs in every street waiting for you to come, shortages, empty promises in a black and white TV in the communal living room. His hand kept writing key words on the notebook, but his brain was miles away. 

“What else?” he insisted, leaning forward on the table, eager to know more, to devour this life he never lived at all, but Natasha’s eyes were glassy, vacant. Had he pushed her too far? Were the memories too rough?

“I remember... I remember that you ate boiled potatoes every goddamn day, that I never tasted a chocolate bar until I was an adult. The world was gray, colorless, and it was always cold, always snowing. There were lots of kids on the streets, orphans like me, but I never paid them any attention, I never gave them anything. I defected to America in... two thousand… two, I think. Or three. But before that life was hard, everything was changing, and old people told you things were better before, that the communist regime had worked. But I never knew if that was true or not…”

Her voice vanished in the air, and for the first time he noticed his own eyes were covered by a sheen layer of tears. He cleaned his face with a sigh, thinking about the alternative universe of someone who never lived at all, someone whose experience was so different, it was unimaginable. He wondered who else had she told this, who else had she revealed to this seemingly insignificant, random memories, and whether they had felt this same emptiness, this knot in their throat. After a pause her voice began again, and Peter reached to grab her hand, always cold, always rigid, full of calluses. She returned the squeeze.

“But I didn’t have a normal childhood, I didn’t live this revolution in a tiny apartment in a poor neighborhood in Moscow. I was in Yakutsk, in Kiev, in the Bolshoi, wherever they sent me. I was one of the twenty-eight girls in the program, and we were concerned with… other stuff.” She stood up suddenly, rolling her shoulders and stretching her arms, and Peter was left with the feeling of something incomplete, of many missing pieces. When she faced him again her mask of indifference was back, dull eyes and straight eyebrows in their usual position. “I think this is enough for your assignment, yes?”

“Y-yes,” he mumbled, looking at his notebook full of an illegible, messy penmanship, some words underlined twice and some annotations inside more annotations. That went far beyond schoolwork; he would keep this conversation in his heart for a long time, and when he thought about that, a phrase popped up in his mind. He dared to ask a final question. “Nat?”

“Yeah?” She was already in front of the oven checking the cookies, just a few steps in front of him, but the distance between them was enormous.

“When you speak... no, I mean, in daily life, do you translate the words in your mind? Do you still think in Russian?”

She revealed a glimpse of a smile that made him shiver, full of straight teeth and sharp eyes and an insinuation he didn’t want to understand.

“I’m afraid so,” she said.

8

“I have a question, Mr Stark.”

“I already _told_ you, you can’t tinker DUMMY yet. It’s my masterpiece, perfect as it is, dummy and all.”

“What? No, that’s not what I mean.”

He'd taken the opportunity now, when they were both alone, to confirm a suspicion that had haunted him since that conversation with her a few weeks ago, and given that Mr Stark was under one of his expensive cars, fixing an oil leak, he wouldn’t need to face him directly. He wouldn’t be able to continue if he had to make eye contact too.

“Then what?”

“It’s about Nat.”

A pause, the hissing sound of the RAM memory he had in his hands, which he was configuring and soldering just for fun, just to fidget with something in the lab.

“I don’t think asking stuff about her is the… wisest thing to do.”

“It’s just…” He fidgeted with the object in his hands, watching the careful integrated circuits in the chip, the patterns that revealed its origin, its metal-oxide semiconductors, the translators of zero force. If only people were as easy to understand as electrical engineering… “Did—did you know she had siblings?”

The wheels of the board where Stark was laying screeched, and soon his disheveled, dirty face appeared, serious and expressionless for once in his life. Both of them scrutinized each other for a moment, Stark with half-lidded eyes and Peter with a strange grimace of nervousness, and he was the first one to break eye contact. His mentor made a quick movement with a plier he had in his hand, twirling it between his fingers.

“Yeah,” Stark finally said, scratching his beard absentmindedly. He went back to his board and pushed it with his feet to go back to the underside of his Camaro, and the distance between them distorted his next words. “We visited their graves when I ran into her in Russia.”

And then, Peter knew.

9

“This has the potential to be the best idea of my whole life, or the worst.”

“I think ‘the worst’ it is,” said Hope Van Dyne, and Gwen Stacy nodded next to him solemnly.

“I’m sure everything will be alright,” Natasha proclaimed, with the fakest 'cheerful' voice he'd ever heard. Peter’s fingers tousled his hair, already too long for his taste, and he tried to remember how his life ended up like this.

_It’s all that spider’s fault. I wish I had sprayed insecticide that day._

“Besides, we’ll need to rename the club. It’s no longer about just spiders. A better option would be _The Insect Club_.”

“Thanks, I hate it,” said Van Dyne amiably, climbing down the rusty stairs behind Gwen and him. That strange cave in the street made him feel as if they were going to the subway, but it was actually a sewer more than anything else. Besides, there was this sharp, almost poignant smell around them; he contained the urge to cover his nose. He didn’t want to seem more childish than he already was.

“What do you think ‘bout _The Entomologic Team_?”

“That’s even worse.”

“Besides, spiders aren’t insects.”

“Ugh, _Arachnid-Insect Club_ then. AIC, to abbreviate.”

“What’s with you and abbreviations? It’s always the same thing…”

“She’s Russian. Everybody knows Russians love abbreviations.”

Their voices and laughter echoed in the dark, musty walls of the sewers, and Peter felt like they were in a bad, B-rated horror movie. At any moment a hand could appear from a pipe and grab his ankle, or worst, a _clown_. Natasha was in front of them, Gwen next to him watching everything like an owl, and Van Dyne was the last, always looking above. The four of them were already suited up.

“Look, I’m not gonna lie, I was joking when I said we could have supervillains in the club.”

“No offense, but I doubt someone called _Insect Man_ is a supervillain. Villain would be too much.”

“Not even that.”

“Hey, let’s not judge beforehand. Maybe he’s a really nice, respectful guy—”

A strange sound resounded in the tunnel, a high, piercing tone, and the hair on his arms stood on end. Gwen next to him tensed up, but Natasha didn’t seem worried.

“If the worst happens,” said Gwen softly, bending forward to pull something out of her cape. “I brought an insecticide.”

And she showed them smugly a can of Baygon against spiders, flies, mosquitoes, bees and centipedes. Laughter bubbled in Peter’s throat like a wave, and he bit his lip to avoid bursting out loud.

“Careful with that,” Natasha told her earnestly, turning around to glance at them. “That’s our kryptonite, all of us. You aim that spray in the wrong direction and we’ll drop...”

“... like flies.”

Their laughter was interrupted by a faint figure moving on the roof, strange and long, and a set of compound eyes shone in the dark. Kafka’s _Metamorphosis_ came to his mind right then, and apparently he wasn’t the only one, because Gwen put her hands on her hips and yelled: “Hey, Gregor Samsa! Get down, we wanna talk with you!”

And Gregor Samsa obeyed.

“Um,” said Hope Van Dyne behind them. “I think we’re gonna need a bigger Baygon.”

“Or an army of Baygons.”

Insect Man was bigger than the videos on the internet implied, _much_ bigger, and the pincers it had instead of hands clicked in their general directions, each the size of his entire body. It was hard to see it in the dim light; it had eyes like a fly, really red and really big, but he wasn’t quite sure if the claws in its face were its mouth, or if that lump was its nose. That thing let out a buzz in a piercing wavelength, beyond even his gifted ear's range, and then it opened its real mouth. A smell of rottenness flooded the hall.

“Er,” said Peter, pointing his wrists at the pipe above the insect. “Do you mind giving us a moment of your time to talk about the AIC?”

And, as it turned out, Insect Man did mind.

10

“Wait, my hair isn’t combed yet!”

“Your hair’s never combed.”

“Shut up.”

“Mr Walker is gonna have a stroke if he keeps watching us like that.”

He was sure their Homeroom teacher knew exactly what they were doing with his phone, but the three of them were some of the best in their year, even their whole school. They already had their homework ready, they paid attention, handed everything in time and mostly stayed out of trouble. He was probably calculating whether it was worth it to scold them.

“No, hold on!” Ned cried, bending over the table. “Gimme the phone, don’t take the picture from that angle.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s my bad side, see?”

“What does Natasha care about your bad side?”

“Whit dis Nitishi ciri bit yir bid sid?”

MJ rolled her eyes next to them, leaning her head backwards to move her wild bangs out of her eyes. 

“Ready, put on the filter.”

“No… no… Oh, cute!”

“Not the dog filter, please.”

“How ‘bout this one?”

“Ugh, why does it have to turn my eyes blue?”

“ _I_ look fabulous.”

They took some pictures with different expressions and filters, more and more ridiculous each, and with an almost obsessiveness thoroughness he adjusted the colors and shades of the one they chose, wanting it to be perfect.

“See that side compliments my face?”

“Ned, please, shut up. Peter, leave it like that, it’s fine.”

“Just a bit more—”

“Parker, Leeds, Jones, a bit of silence, please,” said Mr Walker, glaring at them behind his horn-rimmed glasses. His cheeks reddened, despite the fact he didn’t feel the least ashamed, and the three of them glanced down with mumbled apologies. Somewhere in the room Flash snickered, but that was beyond him.

 _see you soon,_ he texted at the beginning, but it seemed silly with the picture. Of course they were going to see each other soon, Natasha wasn’t going away forever, she was just going to Wakanda to discuss the Accords with the king. She wasn’t leaving for good, but considering everything that had changed since her last trip, he didn’t know how much their relationship was going to shift when she came back.

_good luck_

_you’ll do great_

_bye!_

None seemed appropriate, and he rested his forehead on the cold table in front of him, frustrated. The picture of MJ, Ned and him stared back, the three of them smiling slightly, the three of them trying to look cooler than they really were. What did Natasha care about a Snapchat from some sixteen-year-old kids in the middle of a class? That idea had been stupid, but he just couldn’t get it out of his head. He _didn’t_ want to get it out of his head.

“Did you send it?” whispered Ned at his side. “Did she answer?”

“No, just wait for a sec.”

“Do it before the plane takes off,” was MJ’s whisper, closer than Ned’s, and her voice tickled his ear. That gave him an idea.

_Бу́дет и на на́шей у́лице пра́здник.**  
_

He put that in the text under the pic and he sent it and locked the phone, his grimace reflected in the dark screen. Did he spell it right? Had it been too dramatic? He'd been practicing in the last few weeks, yelling a badly pronounced _‘privet’_ at any petty criminal that crossed his way, writing with crooked penmanship the Cyrillic alphabet on the edges of his notebooks, but proverbs were beyond him. That particular one had been whispered by his uncle Ben after a math competition in fifth or sixth grade, when Peter had panicked and messed the whole thing up. He had ran in tears to his uncle’s arms, who had hugged him tightly and murmured: “ _There’ll be your time to win too, don’t worry_ ”. And that gave him the strength to shake his opponent’s hand without dissolving into tears or having a tantrum.

He wished he could come up with a better idea to express what he felt for Nat, but words failed him, they always had. He could only hope for her to understand little by little that she was important to him, that she was his friend, and as such he was going to do everything in his power to support and help her, despite the seventeen years of difference, despite the abyss between their childhoods and personalities and skills.

 _I’m just a Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman, after all,_ he thought fondly, and his phone screen lit with a message.

_Nat: photo_

He opened the chat with sweaty fingers and the image lightened up his dark eyes, drawing a shaky smile out of him.

 _xoxo_ , was the only thing written under the photo of her sitting on the plane, with her hair recently dyed platinum blonde, wearing his Black Widow sweatshirt. Her head was slightly tilted, her pouty lips stained crimson red, and she was making the peace sign with her right hand, but the thing he liked the most about the picture were her bright eyes that smiled despite everything. His own smile widened, and he saved the picture in his camera roll and favorites, thinking about the memories that shaped them, the memories that haunted and devoured them, the ones they would have to live with. A hand rested on his shoulder, warm and soft.

“You ok, Pete?” whispered MJ. He nodded.

“Yeah,” he replied, and Natasha’s lively eyes were the last thing he saw before he turned off his phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *In the comic Shadow and Light Vol 1 is established that the Black Widow had biological brothers before a fire, and one of them (Vindiktor) survived to hunt her and kill her for abandoning them. I really like that headcanon, so in my mind she has/had three brothers.
> 
> **"There will be our turn to triumph". Lit. in Russian: "There'll be a holiday in our street too."


End file.
